A Box Full of Memories
by NeverAgain1992
Summary: Gwen always complained that Jack never shared his past and now, staring down at the remnants of it, she could see why.


Hi all!

After a lengthy writing retirement, I've decided to get back into the game - especially having seen how thing were left up in the air between Jack and Gwen. As always, I encourage constructive criticism and I am more than willing to answer any questions you may have. As far as I am aware, all facts in this fic are correct (But, to be honest, I was a tad confused about Alice's time line - Wikipedia was less than helpful in this instance). However, if you spot a mistake, please tell me and I will endeavour to right it.

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A Box Full of Memories

Gwen always complained that Jack never shared his past and now, staring down at the remnants of it, she could see why. The metal box had been waiting for her when she got back home from the supermarket, wrapped in brown paper and laid in front of her door. A small note from one of the builders reconstructing Torchwood 3 had been scrawled on the top – The tin had been found in the wreckage of what used to be Jack's office and was the only thing undamaged.

The box wasn't very large or much to look at – it was so extraordinarily ordinary that it's facade of normality only heightened the tragedy within. Inside, neatly grouped and ordered, lay hundreds of photographs shot from the dawn of sepia pictures to the distant future when, apparently, the figures in the photos were capable of movement.

The bundle at the top of the box, tied together neatly with a faded blue ribbon, were undoubtedly the oldest of the collection if the grey scale and sepia figures were any indication. One of the few hazy photos showed Jack donned in full military uniform, another: Jack's Victorian wedding, he and his bride strikingly gazing out against a grey curtained background, and one more presented Jack's other half with a couple of young teenage girls – a wife and daughters he'd outlived by decades.

Placing them gently to the side, she picked up the next bunch, almost dreading finding another happy, grinning Jack with a family he'd lost.

These pictures, this time tied with a tie-dyed band, were obviously taken in the 1970's. Jack posed next to a stunningly beautiful Mediterranean woman and a toddler girl who was agonisingly familiar – Even in her youth, Alice possessed the same striking brown eyes that only ever looked upon Jack with a cold hatred now. Pictures of young Alice dominated this set: Alice playing in the park, Alice at a party and Alice receiving awards at school. Her mother appeared in a few photos, but Jack was completely absent and Gwen couldn't help but wonder why he wasn't there.

Gwen stopped for a moment, wondering whether she should have been looking through the most personal parts of Jack life; He hadn't told her about his families, and therefore either didn't want her to know, or it was too a painful subject to raise. She eventually came to the conclusion that whichever it was, it would be unlikely that he would ever find out... He'd made it quite clear last month on that hilltop that he wasn't coming back.

Gwen instantly recognised the third bundle, wrapped in rubber bands, as the Torchwood team, immortalised in bright pixels of colour. The vivid images of smiling Tosh, Owen and Ianto immediately made her heart ache and she quickly shoved them to the side without venturing into them, willing herself not to cry.

Only one set remained, lying at the bottom of the box. Hands shaking and eyes watery, she plucked them from the tin. A young Jack and Grey, sharing similar confident grins, sat on a beach in buttery sunlight laughing over some long forgotten joke. Now, seeing him when he was truly happy, Gwen could recognize the extent of the tortured look in Jack's eyes the last time she'd looked at him – he'd lost so much of his carefree innocence to dark invading forces he couldn't stop and didn't deserve.

She flicked it to the back of the pile and began examining the next – another wedding photograph, she thought, but not any kind of wedding she'd ever seen. The red-head bride glittered and gleamed in rich scarlet fabrics that swayed in the breeze and Jack, a little of his naivety vanished in his gaze, looked young – In both the physical and emotional senses – and the happiest she'd ever seen him. The couple were seated before a spectacular backdrop – one of a brilliantly glowing city in front of the greenest hills and the most shimmering ocean Gwen had ever seen. She concluded this must have been his first marriage in his time line – the first wife he'd loved and lost to some unimaginable fate... a fate he'd been seemingly cursed with.

She flipped through several more moving pictures in a haze, but was captured by the last one: a young girl, no more than seven years old, beamed out against a background of tall stalks of barley and cloudless blue sky. Gwen presumed the Jack's first bride must have been her mother – they shared the same pure beauty and fiery auburn curls. But there were no further photographs of the girl, and Gwen was left hanging with the awful possibility that the little girl and her mother were also dead.

Gwen stared down, dumbstruck at how he could keep so much pain buried away. Up until Grey came back, she had always taken Jack at face value... but after she'd seen the pain Grey caused him it became clear to her that a deeper side to Jack existed – one filled with raw emotion rather than the cold, clinical, logical side she'd become accustomed to. However, until she'd examined the photos, she'd never realised just how intense the hurt he kept under lock and key was.

Forcing herself to put Jack and his misery to the back of her mind, she began clearing up the photos. It was only then that she noticed one was left in the tin, upside down and ungrouped. Hesitantly, she turned it over.

She gasped - Her own face grinned at her from the picture. She and Jack were sat on the settee in the now-destroyed hub, his arm across the back of the seat behind her and her head resting on his shoulder.

Gwen could just recall Tosh taking this – they had just finished a particularly long and difficult clean-up operation and had collapsed onto the sofa to rest when Tosh had sprung her new digital camera on them, wanting some guinea-pigs to test it.

Gwen ran her hand over the photograph, noticing how at ease he looked... how carefree. She flitted through the others, trying to find a comparable instance when he was as relaxed as he was in that picture. After much searching she found one: Jack sat on a swing in a beautiful garden with his first daughter, smiling the same smile in that one as he was in the one Tosh took.

Gwen's heart pounded as she realised – For the first time since he was young, he'd been totally comfortable with his existence... that all changed with the 456. He'd become complacent, but when he realised that she would one day too become just another woman he'd loved and lost, he'd run away from his life here because he couldn't bear to watch her die.

Pocketing the photograph and putting all the others back in the tin, Gwen was more determined now that she was going to see Jack again. She didn't know how, but one day she was going to get him to come back to where he once said he belonged.

She silently vowed to do whatever it took to get him to come home but little did she know that Jack, having reached the edge of the universe and still finding nothing he longed for as much as Gwen, was already making his way back to her...

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I originally wrote this as a one-shot but since then I've seen the potential for a larger story. I thought perhaps I could make this the introduction to the larger fic. Good idea? Bad idea? Please let me know.

Thanks for taking the time to read my fic and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day :)

Never Again


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